I hope you are able to find someone who is willing to swap a 3G camera for your 4G camera. It's pretty obvious that that's the only solution that's going to work for you.
Personally, I wouldn't use time-lapse 24-7 and that wasn't what I suggested. I'd use it for short periods when the animal is likely to be at the trap. I'd use whatever "normal" settings are until there are signs that activity is likely to happen, then I'd change settings. As soon as I verified that the animal was in the trap and okay, I'd change the settings back to normal. I'd get at least two event photos a day from the camera, but possibly pics either every 6 hours or every 3 hours, depending on how critical it would be to get to the animal after it's caught. I like event photos because they reassure me that all is well. I'm not waiting on something to happen so I know the camera is working and I don't have to request a photo, I get it automatically.
I'm running over 20 cameras, many of which are doing security duty. If there isn't anything going on, those cameras could go for days or weeks without sending a photo. I have all my cameras set to send pics at 9 AM and 9 PM. The video-capable ones are also scheduled to send pics at 3 PM and status reports at midnight, 7 AM, noon, and 6 PM. That way, except between midnight and 7 AM, I'm never more than 3 hours away from some event in case I want to request something, including a settings change. If there's activity in front of the camera, it's generally a lot less time. I can keep an eye on the weather and the battery status from the P number on the night photo (because I don't trust the battery level in the status report). I know my cameras are working and that nothing interesting is happening in front of them without having to request a photo from every one of them just to check.
I'm not really sure how SC should have gone about notifying customers about real time being gone. I don't disagree with you that it's something that some customers really need to be aware of because they rely on it. It's a legitimate concern under some circumstances.